Complete Plays, The
Page 239
And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.
Gloucester
The curse my noble father laid on thee,
When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper
And with thy scorns drew’st rivers from his eyes,
And then, to dry them, gavest the duke a clout
Steep’d in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland —
His curses, then from bitterness of soul
Denounced against thee, are all fall’n upon thee;
And God, not we, hath plagued thy bloody deed.
Queen Elizabeth
So just is God, to right the innocent.
Hastings
O, ’twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,
And the most merciless that e’er was heard of!
Rivers
Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.
Dorset
No man but prophesied revenge for it.
Buckingham
Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.
Queen Margaret
What were you snarling all before I came,
Ready to catch each other by the throat,
And turn you all your hatred now on me?
Did York’s dread curse prevail so much with heaven?
That Henry’s death, my lovely Edward’s death,
Their kingdom’s loss, my woful banishment,
Could all but answer for that peevish brat?
Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?
Why, then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses!
If not by war, by surfeit die your king,
As ours by murder, to make him a king!
Edward thy son, which now is Prince of Wales,
For Edward my son, which was Prince of Wales,
Die in his youth by like untimely violence!
Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,
Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self!
Long mayst thou live to wail thy children’s loss;
And see another, as I see thee now,
Deck’d in thy rights, as thou art stall’d in mine!
Long die thy happy days before thy death;
And, after many lengthen’d hours of grief,
Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s queen!
Rivers and Dorset, you were standers by,
And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son
Was stabb’d with bloody daggers: God, I pray him,
That none of you may live your natural age,
But by some unlook’d accident cut off!
Gloucester
Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither’d hag!
Queen Margaret
And leave out thee? stay, dog, for thou shalt hear me.
If heaven have any grievous plague in store
Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,
O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,
And then hurl down their indignation
On thee, the troubler of the poor world’s peace!
The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul!
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou livest,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!
No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be whilst some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
Thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog!
Thou that wast seal’d in thy nativity
The slave of nature and the son of hell!
Thou slander of thy mother’s heavy womb!
Thou loathed issue of thy father’s loins!
Thou rag of honour! thou detested —
Gloucester
Margaret.
Queen Margaret
Richard!
Gloucester
Ha!
Queen Margaret
I call thee not.
Gloucester
I cry thee mercy then, for I had thought
That thou hadst call’d me all these bitter names.
Queen Margaret
Why, so I did; but look’d for no reply.
O, let me make the period to my curse!
Gloucester
’Tis done by me, and ends in ‘Margaret.’
Queen Elizabeth
Thus have you breathed your curse against yourself.
Queen Margaret
Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my fortune!
Why strew’st thou sugar on that bottled spider,
Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about?
Fool, fool! thou whet’st a knife to kill thyself.
The time will come when thou shalt wish for me
To help thee curse that poisonous bunchback’d toad.
Hastings
False-boding woman, end thy frantic curse,
Lest to thy harm thou move our patience.
Queen Margaret
Foul shame upon you! you have all moved mine.
Rivers
Were you well served, you would be taught your duty.
Queen Margaret
To serve me well, you all should do me duty,
Teach me to be your queen, and you my subjects:
O, serve me well, and teach yourselves that duty!
Dorset
Dispute not with her; she is lunatic.
Queen Margaret
Peace, master marquess, you are malapert:
Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current.
O, that your young nobility could judge
What ’twere to lose it, and be miserable!
They that stand high have many blasts to shake them;
And if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces.
Gloucester
Good counsel, marry: learn it, learn it, marquess.
Dorset
It toucheth you, my lord, as much as me.
Gloucester
Yea, and much more: but I was born so high,
Our aery buildeth in the cedar’s top,
And dallies with the wind and scorns the sun.
Queen Margaret
And turns the sun to shade; alas! alas!
Witness my son, now in the shade of death;
Whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath
Hath in eternal darkness folded up.
Your aery buildeth in our aery’s nest.
O God, that seest it, do not suffer it!
As it was won with blood, lost be it so!
Buckingham
Have done! for shame, if not for charity.
Queen Margaret
Urge neither charity nor shame to me:
Uncharitably with me have you dealt,
And shamefully by you my hopes are butcher’d.
My charity is outrage, life my shame
And in that shame still live my sorrow’s rage.
Buckingham
Have done, have done.
Queen Margaret
O princely Buckingham I’ll kiss thy hand,
In sign of league and amity with thee:
Now fair befal thee and thy noble house!
Thy garments are not spotted with our blood,
Nor thou within the compass of my curse.
Buckingham
Nor no one here; for curses never pass
The lips of those that breathe them in the air.
Queen Margaret
I’ll not believe but they ascend the sky,
And there awake God’s gentle-sleeping peace.
O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog!
Look, when he fawns, he bites; and when he bites,
His venom tooth will rankle to the death:
Have not to do with him, beware of him;
Sin, death, and hell have set their marks on him,
And all their ministers attend on him.
Gloucester
What doth she say, my Lord of Buckingham?
Buckingham
Queen Margaret
What, dost thou scorn me for my gentle counsel?
And soothe the devil that I warn thee from?
O, but remember this another day,
When he shall split thy very heart with sorrow,
And say poor Margaret was a prophetess!
Live each of you the subjects to his hate,
And he to yours, and all of you to God’s!
Exit
Hastings
My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses.
Rivers
And so doth mine: I muse why she’s at liberty.
Gloucester
I cannot blame her: by God’s holy mother,
She hath had too much wrong; and I repent
My part thereof that I have done to her.
Queen Elizabeth
I never did her any, to my knowledge.
Gloucester
But you have all the vantage of her wrong.
I was too hot to do somebody good,
That is too cold in thinking of it now.
Marry, as for Clarence, he is well repaid,
He is frank’d up to fatting for his pains
God pardon them that are the cause of it!
Rivers
A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion,
To pray for them that have done scathe to us.
Gloucester
So do I ever:
Aside
being well-advised.
For had I cursed now, I had cursed myself.
Enter Catesby
Catesby
Madam, his majesty doth call for you,
And for your grace; and you, my noble lords.
Queen Elizabeth
Catesby, we come. Lords, will you go with us?
Rivers
Madam, we will attend your grace.
Exeunt all but Gloucester
Gloucester
I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.
The secret mischiefs that I set abroach
I lay unto the grievous charge of others.
Clarence, whom I, indeed, have laid in darkness,
I do beweep to many simple gulls
Namely, to Hastings, Derby, Buckingham;
And say it is the queen and her allies
That stir the king against the duke my brother.
Now, they believe it; and withal whet me
To be revenged on Rivers, Vaughan, Grey:
But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.
Enter two Murderers
But, soft! here come my executioners.
How now, my hardy, stout resolved mates!
Are you now going to dispatch this deed?
First Murderer
We are, my lord; and come to have the warrant
That we may be admitted where he is.
Gloucester
Well thought upon; I have it here about me.
Gives the warrant
When you have done, repair to Crosby Place.
But, sirs, be sudden in the execution,
Withal obdurate, do not hear him plead;
For Clarence is well-spoken, and perhaps
May move your hearts to pity if you mark him.
First Murderer
Tush!
Fear not, my lord, we will not stand to prate;
Talkers are no good doers: be assured
We come to use our hands and not our tongues.
Gloucester
Your eyes drop millstones, when fools’ eyes drop tears:
I like you, lads; about your business straight;
Go, go, dispatch.
First Murderer
We will, my noble lord.
Exeunt
SCENE IV. LONDON. THE TOWER.
Enter Clarence and Brakenbury
Brakenbury
Why looks your grace so heavily today?
Clarence
O, I have pass’d a miserable night,
So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,
That, as I am a Christian faithful man,
I would not spend another such a night,
Though ’twere to buy a world of happy days,
So full of dismal terror was the time!
Brakenbury
What was your dream? I long to hear you tell it.
Clarence
Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower,
And was embark’d to cross to Burgundy;
And, in my company, my brother Gloucester;
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk
Upon the hatches: thence we looked toward England,
And cited up a thousand fearful times,
During the wars of York and Lancaster
That had befall’n us. As we paced along
Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,
Methought that Gloucester stumbled; and, in falling,
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard,
Into the tumbling billows of the main.
Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!
What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw’d upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scatter’d in the bottom of the sea:
Some lay in dead men’s skulls; and, in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As ’twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,
Which woo’d the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mock’d the dead bones that lay scatter’d by.
Brakenbury
Had you such leisure in the time of death
To gaze upon the secrets of the deep?
Clarence
Methought I had; and often did I strive
To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood
Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth
To seek the empty, vast and wandering air;
But smother’d it within my panting bulk,
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.
Brakenbury
Awaked you not with this sore agony?
Clarence
O, no, my dream was lengthen’d after life;
O, then began the tempest to my soul,
Who pass’d, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.
The first that there did greet my stranger soul,
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick;
Who cried aloud, ‘What scourge for perjury
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?’
And so he vanish’d: then came wandering by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood; and he squeak’d out aloud,
‘Clarence is come; false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,
That stabb’d me in the field by Tewksbury;
Seize on him, Furies, take him to your torments!’
With that, methoughts, a legion of foul fiends
Environ’d me about, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that with the very noise
I trembling waked, and for a season after
Could not believe but that I was in hell,
Such terrible impression made the dream.
Brakenbury
No marvel, my lord, though it affrighted you;
I promise, I am afraid to hear you tell it.
Clarence
O
Brakenbury, I have done those things,
Which now bear evidence against my soul,
For Edward’s sake; and see how he requites me!
O God! if my deep prayers cannot appease thee,
But thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds,
Yet execute thy wrath in me alone,
O, spare my guiltless wife and my poor children!
I pray thee, gentle keeper, stay by me;
My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.
Brakenbury
I will, my lord: God give your grace good rest!
Clarence sleeps
Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours,
Makes the night morning, and the noon-tide night.
Princes have but their tides for their glories,
An outward honour for an inward toil;
And, for unfelt imagination,
They often feel a world of restless cares:
So that, betwixt their tides and low names,
There’s nothing differs but the outward fame.
Enter the two Murderers
First Murderer
Ho! who’s here?
Brakenbury
In God’s name what are you, and how came you hither?
First Murderer
I would speak with Clarence, and I came hither on my legs.
Brakenbury
Yea, are you so brief?
Second Murderer
O sir, it is better to be brief than tedious. Show him our commission; talk no more.
Brakenbury reads it
Brakenbury
I am, in this, commanded to deliver
The noble Duke of Clarence to your hands:
I will not reason what is meant hereby,
Because I will be guiltless of the meaning.
Here are the keys, there sits the duke asleep:
I’ll to the king; and signify to him
That thus I have resign’d my charge to you.
First Murderer
Do so, it is a point of wisdom: fare you well.
Exit Brakenbury
Second Murderer
What, shall we stab him as he sleeps?
First Murderer
No; then he will say ’twas done cowardly, when he wakes.
Second Murderer
When he wakes! why, fool, he shall never wake till the judgment-day.
First Murderer
Why, then he will say we stabbed him sleeping.
Second Murderer
The urging of that word ‘judgment’ hath bred a kind of remorse in me.
First Murderer
What, art thou afraid?
Second Murderer
Not to kill him, having a warrant for it; but to be damned for killing him, from which no warrant can defend us.
First Murderer
I thought thou hadst been resolute.
Second Murderer
So I am, to let him live.
First Murderer
Back to the Duke of Gloucester, tell him so.
Second Murderer
I pray thee, stay a while: I hope my holy humour will change; ’twas wont to hold me but while one would tell twenty.